It is a well accepted practice, particularly in the computer industry, to record information on recording disks that are then commonly maintained closely confined in stacks for storage purposes. For retrieval of the information so recorded and stored, the particular disk having the needed information stored thereon is selected from the stack and a transducer is brought into contiguous relationship therewith, as is well known.
Various devices have heretofore been suggested and/or utilized for selecting or positioning a record disk for information recording/retrieval. While the disks included in a stack could be manually separated one from another until the needed disk is found and that disk then removed from the stack and brought to a transducer, this is most often too time consuming, as well as being frequently difficult and/or expensive to implement.
Devices have heretofore been suggested and/or utilized with mechanical parts for separating phonograph records, for example, by axially sliding the records using a central selector to hold one portion of the stack while the other portion is gravity fed to a turntable for rotation of a selected record thereat (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,960,340). Devices have also been heretofore suggested and/or utilized with mechanical parts for contacting disks at the central hub portion thereof and causing rotation of only the selected disk (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,229,269).
Systems for creating an axial spacing between adjacent disks of a stack of rotating disks to allow transducer access to a particular disk within the stack have also been suggested and/or utilized. Among such systems are devices wherein air is utilized at the periphery of the disks to create a space (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,130,393), devices wherein air is utilized at a co-rotating actuator to create a space between adjacent disks (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,011,591), and devices wherein mechanical means is utilized at the periphery and air centrally to create a space between adjacent disks (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,019,204).
In addition, air has heretofore been applied through the central hub portion of a stack of co-rotating disks to act in conjunction with rapid displacement of the endplates engaging the opposite sides of the stack to enlarge an axial opening between two adjacent disks sufficiently for transducer accessing (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,994,017).